


The First Turning

by Ori (magnetium)



Category: True Blood
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-14
Updated: 2009-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 05:39:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1001652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetium/pseuds/Ori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Magister wasn't entirely correct about Bill never turning anyone before. Some things are meant to stay buried.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Turning

Bill had not been present to watch them pull away from the dock; instead, his first view from the side of the ship was under the moonlight, the sea a vast expanse of darkness beneath them. He stared down at it for a long while, feeling as though he were meeting a kindred spirit. The sea seemed to be filled with the same substance that filled him. It was rolling, turning, restless black—when he looked at it, he needed no introductions to know that he was meeting another form of death, a long-lost relative of his own dark purpose.

It was in the midst of this reverie that he was interrupted by Lorena, who seemed to know his reflections without the need for words.

"We'll have none of that, the journey's just begun." She stood just behind him; he could feel her presence, the pull of his own blood to hers. He turned to face her.

"I do not like boats," he told her, slipping his arms around her waist.

"You've never been on one as a vampire before. I think you'll find them much improved." She gazed past him, into the night sky that had no end. "You have no need to fear the water anymore."

"It's not a fear of water." He reached for her chin, pulling her face gently back toward his own. "I simply don't like being so… removed from land." He kissed her. "However, your presence does make it more bearable."

She smiled at him from behind her lashes in that way she had, as if her pleasure was a secret only she could know. "Come, let's go feed. The girl is waiting."

He nodded and released his hold on her, replacing one of his hands on the small of her back as he guided them both back to their stateroom. They met a few humans on the way—mostly crew members shuffling to finish their duties, and a few just coming back from having too many drinks below deck. They were all easy prey; he and Lorena could have overpowered any one of them with a simple glamour, but they had brought along their own human for this trip. It wouldn't do to arouse any suspicion onboard a small ship, where rumours and hysteria spread quickly.

Their stateroom was one of the larger suites on the ship, big enough to hold both of their coffins, each of which was disguised as a wardrobe. Once the door had been shut, Bill removed his jacket and knelt on the bed where the girl waited.

Her name was Holly. A light-skinned girl, with fine, yellow doll's hair. Her wide eyes were such a pale blue that they seemed devoid of sight; it could be startling to realise she was looking at you. They hadn't touched her yet except to glamour her. Bill breathed in her scent deeply and felt his fangs slide out. He touched his nose to her neck, then licked the skin above her vein. She quivered beneath him.

He turned back to look at Lorena. She still stood by the door, watching him with intense interest. He gestured to the girl in an invitation. She shook her head.

"Take your fill, lover." She walked over and sat in one of the arm chairs by the porthole, draping her arm across the back of it and crossing her legs. He understood that she wanted to watch it, to feel it through him.

He closed his eyes and resumed his exploration of the girl's neck, smelling her and licking her skin, lost in the delicious sweep of anticipation. He reached down and pulled up her white, satin nightgown, sliding his hand in between her legs. He felt her breath catch on its way to her lungs. She would be pliant for him, but some part of her was still aware. Still, even after the years with Lorena, he felt a jolt of repulsion somewhere deep inside at his actions, but he pushed it away with practiced force.

When he could wait no longer, he freed himself and entered her. He heard Lorena shift in the armchair, watching him as he took the girl's last vestige of innocence. She was young, barely a woman, and would soon be of a marrying age. Now her father would be unable to promote her as untouched to any interested suitors—not that he would be seeing his daughter again anytime soon.

As he thrust into her, he opened the skin on her neck, feeling the delicious slickness as his fangs slid in, covered in the blood that pumped up at them. He drank with careful abandon, knowing Lorena was expecting a show, yet trying to avoid draining the girl too much. They needed her to last for the duration of the journey.

When he had satisfied his thirst, he rolled over to lay on his back, glancing over at his companion. Now she rose and joined him, settling herself on top of him, taking the girl's place in bringing him to completion. Lorena's strong thighs moved her above him in an insistent rhythm, and the freshness of the blood flowing through him brought him into her quickly.

Afterward, they lay together, stroking the skin of each other's arms. The girl remained curled up on the edge of the bed, all but forgotten. Her blood stained the crisp sheet below her.

**

Days flowed into a week on the ship, and they settled into a routine. Each night they would feed, just enough to keep a bit of colour in their cheeks, and then they would go below decks, down into the depths of the ship's belly. There was a drinking parlour there, and it never lacked for patrons fresh from the constraints of Prohibition. Sometimes they would dance, although they were required to keep their movements tediously slow to avoid alarming any humans. Holly accompanied them most nights, dressed in the frilly, bustled China-doll dresses that Lorena had picked out for her. They would whisper to her what to say, and send her to seduce the admiring young men, who sat drinking their lager. Then they would laugh as she dashed a young man's hopes and slapped his stunned face with her lace-covered hand.

It was their eighth night aboard the ship when Bill awoke to hear Holly coughing. It was a strange sort of cough, as though she was being strangled, the effort plain in her gasping breaths. He removed the lid from his coffin and stepped out, frowning at the sight of her on the stateroom's single bed. Her face was contorted in the dim glow of the moonlight through the porthole, a sheen of sweat on her skin. Her fingers grasped the sheets, clenching and unclenching as she struggled to breathe.

He knelt over her, trying to determine the cause of the trouble. He smoothed back the hair on her brow and woke her. Her eyes flew open, pupils dilated, darker than before.

"Holly. Tell me what ails you."

She shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Can't breathe. Don't... don't feel right, Mr. William." She looked at him, her eyes seeming to truly see him, through the glamour. "Am I dying?"

"You are not. Lay still." He stood up, walking over to Lorena's coffin. Her lid opened as he approached, and she took in both him and the girl in one quick glance.

"She is ill."

"Yes. Perhaps we should call a doctor."

Lorena raised an eyebrow. "And let him examine her, bite marks and all?"

He paused. She was right, any doctor would notice the marks on her neck immediately. Here in the stateroom, they couldn't cover her neck with another satin bow.

"Give her some of your blood," she instructed him.

"Will that work if she has a sickness? There is no wound here to heal."

"It can't hurt to try it." She walked over to the small closet that housed their chest, pulling a petticoat and a dress from it. "Just give her a little and see how she reacts."

He returned to Holly's side, lifting his wrist to his mouth. She watched him, silent but for the coughs that racked her small body. She seemed to have slipped back into the glamour. When he had torn a gash in his own skin, he lay it against her lips.

"Drink, Holly."

For a moment she would not open her mouth, then her lips parted and his blood flowed into her. He felt her swallow it away and pulled his wrist back, waiting to see the effect. She quieted almost immediately; her fingers relaxed as she took a deep breath.

He stood up. "It appears to have worked."

"Good. Leave her there for now. We can find someone below to feed on tonight, make it look like an accident." Lorena emerged from their adjoining washroom dressed in a form-fitting red dress and smiled at him. "It's been a while since we hunted together, anyway."

He smiled back at her and stepped forward to kiss her, tongue running along her teeth, on her lowered fangs. "Did you have anyone in mind?"

She slid her hands up his sides, fingers feather-light on the rumpled sleeping shirt he wore. "There may be a young man I've had my eye on." She looked up at him, smiling. "We can each take a turn with him."

He dressed quickly, into his customary evening suit and bowtie. When they left the room, Holly was fast asleep on her bed, her breaths deep and regular.

**

Their hunt ended in a dark corner of the engine room that night, their attentions to the young man brutal and languorous. Bill preferred to glamour their victims, but Lorena stopped him. She liked to see the terror in the eyes of their prey. His screams were drowned out by the deafening roar of the machinery. When they had finished with him, Bill hoisted the body up on one shoulder and threw it into one of the enormous machines, where it tangled in the teeth of the great gears, destroying any sign of their delicate bite marks.

Holly was still asleep when they returned to the room, minutes before sun-up. They left her with some food beside the bed and crawled into their coffins. Bill could still smell the blood from their kill—he had washed his face out of necessity, but it remained under his fingernails. When he slept, he dreamed of feeding and woke to find he had been sucking on the tips of his fingers like a child.

When he got out of his coffin the following night, he found Holly in poor condition again. Her food was untouched, and her breathing seemed worse than before. Lorena had woken before him and sat beside the girl on the bed, watching her intently. She looked up at Bill.

"She's got TB."

"Tuberculosis?" Bill frowned. "How do you know?"

Lorena shrugged. "I've seen it before. All the symptoms are the same. " She paused. "If she drinks from us, she may continue to live. But if we feed on her, she will die."

Bill sat down in the armchair, looking at the frail human on their bed. "Then she is of no use to us."

Lorena shook her head. "No. Although..." She gazed at him, a little twinkle in her eye that seemed inappropriate for the situation. "She made a very good puppet."

Bill frowned. "What does that mean?"

Lorena shrugged again: her shoulder moving slowly, suggestively. She leaned toward him on the bed, the thin silk nightgown that covered her opening to allow him a view of the curves of her breasts. "We could turn her."

He stood up from the chair very suddenly, walking over to the porthole. There was nothing to see outside besides the side of the ship and the darkness of the ocean. "We said we would use her and then kill her once we arrived."

"Yes. I know." Lorena rolled over onto her back, laying her head against Holly's thighs. "But she could be like our daughter, Bill. We could all be like a little family."

"I have no need for another family."

"Then what am I?" Lorena's voice was sharp.

He turned around and went over to kneel beside her. "You are my lover, my maker. Our bond is more than the human concept of family. Siblings, man and wife, parent and child. We are everything and more than that."

Lorena's dark look lessened with a slow smile that crept in. "You have learned so well."

He bent down to kiss her, stroking out a curl in her hair. "I don't need a daughter, Lorena. I only need you."

She stretched out an arm across Holly's torso, fingers caressing the girl's collarbone. "She can be your pet, then. I know you have a fondness for her. Don't deny it, I've seen it in your eyes."

He looked up at the girl's face. It was angelic in her deep sleep, so perfect that it seemed to cry out for either the desecration of death or the brilliance of immortality. She was a quickly fading rose as a human. Lorena was not wrong that he wanted more time with her.

"We should release the glamour and ask her. She should be given the choice."

Lorena sat up, frowning. "Did I give you a choice?"

"You did not." He did not add that it was one reason he felt they should now ask Holly.

She tilted her head a little to the side, watching him. "If I had given you the choice, would you have said yes?"

"No."

"And would you prefer to be human now?"

He hesitated. "No."

"Then I leave drawing the obvious conclusion to you."

He looked back at Holly, watching the regular rise and fall of her chest. "I will think on it." He stood and moved over the girl, opening his wrist for her again. Her eyes opened at the pressure of him against her mouth and she obediently opened, sucking down the blood until he felt the beginnings of a swoon and pulled his wrist away. Her little stomach curved outward with the volume of blood she had just consumed.

Lorena also rose to stand beside him, searching his face as he licked the remaining droplets from his healing wound. "Were you this sentimental when you were a human?" She put a hand on the back of his neck and pulled him down to her, then put her lips against his ear, her fangs touching his skin. "It's not an attractive trait in a vampire."

He pulled back, meeting her eyes. "You did not seem to mind it when I gave you this." He touched her necklace, lifting the pendant in his fingers.

She was still for a moment, looking down at it with him. Then she gave a little shake of her head and it dropped back against her chest. "We arrive in two days. Decide by then."

**

They left Holly again that night, this time taking some chickens from the cook's hold for nourishment. After they had quenched their real thirst, then made their way to the drinking parlour to play at a false one. The quaint human charm of the place was beginning to wear thin on Bill, and when Lorena had become engaged in flirtation with a man (whom she intended to feed on, despite their rule—he could see it in her eyes), he left for the upper decks and finally emerged by the same bit of railing he had leaned on their first night aboard.

The ocean was the same as it had been, boiling beneath him with a fury that would not be abated. He thought about Lorena's words, telling him he should no longer fear the water, even though Bill had never truly feared the water before now. Never before had it appeared as such an endless morass of oblivion, waiting to incorporate him into it. He was not afraid that he would die if he fell into it—he was afraid he never would.

He lingered for several minutes at the railing, then walked back to the stateroom. Holly was asleep on the bed, as she had been for days now, in between racking coughs. He sat beside her, gazing down at her face, which was beginning to show the strain of the illness. Her skin was pale and cool to the touch, her eyes ringed with red. She looked more like a vampire now than ever before, as if she were already preparing herself for the transformation. He cleared her mind of the glamour, and she opened her eyes at once.

"Mr. William, am I dead?" Her voice was ragged, caught by gasps as she struggled to pull in the necessary air to speak.

"Not yet, Holly."

She turned her head away from him. "Will you kill me or will I die slowly?" She turned back to gaze at him, and Bill had the sudden intuition that beneath her soft exterior there was a tougher countenance.

"You may decide." He paused. "There is another option." When she said nothing, he continued. "You can become vampire if you wish it."

Her eyes widened, glistening with fever in the lamp's light. "I can?"

"It wouldn't be without consequences." He took her hand. "You should understand: if you are turned, you will leave behind your human life and all those that you love. You will always be consumed with a thirst for blood, and you will never see the sun again."

"But I will live?"

"You will die. But you will rise again."

He felt her hand brush his, her fingers settling onto his own like tiny birds, tired from flight. In her touch, he felt her heartbeat, and it was quick—much quicker than it should have been, each beat a defiant struggle against the inevitable. She nodded to him, and he understood that she had made her choice. When he opened his vein for her this time, she closed her eyes as she drank, and he felt her leaving it in her mouth a moment longer than before, tasting it. He did not glamour her again.

**

When they reached land, Bill took her into his coffin with him, to be transported with them at nightfall. In the dock warehouse, once left alone by the crewmen, they left their coffins to be delivered to their home and took the girl to the Monastere de Cimiez. The graveyard attached to the monastery held many ancient graves, and they took their time finding a spot where their digging would not be disturbed the next day.

Lorena perched on a flat headstone while Bill dug, the girl propped up beside her, nearly dead. Her breath sounds were nearly nonexistent: short, shallow gasps into fluid-filled lungs. Lorena twirled her fingers in the girl's hair, the blonde silk slipping easily through her hand.

"What a momentous night for you, Bill. Very few men are allowed the joy of creation. Being a maker is one of the most important things you will ever do."

He stuck the shovel into the ground again, concentrating on emptying enough room in the dirt to accommodate Holly's body. He could feel the pleasure and anticipation in Lorena's words, felt them wrap around him and try to infuse him with their essence, but could not match her excitement. He knew that Holly would go into the ground no matter what he did tonight, but her renewal as a vampire seemed unholy, even though holiness had ceased to matter to either of them a long time ago.

When it was time, he cradled Holly in his arms beside the earthen grave, feeling a tenderness he hadn't felt toward a human since his own turning. He hesitated, lips on her neck.

He felt Lorena move to crouch behind him, her words a cold whisper in his ear. "Do it, Bill. You were made for it."

He closed his eyes, listening to the weak pump of the girl's heart, breathing in the scent of her sweat and humanity. Then his fangs broke her skin, and any gentleness he had been feeling fled, replaced only by a dark, fiendish longing for her blood, her life. He drank and drank, mouthful after mouthful, until it was running down his chin and stained the flimsy dress she wore.

When she was drained nearly to death, he pulled away and lay her on the ground. She had been far beyond regaining consciousness before he had fed on her, now her body hardly functioned at all. In a few minutes she would beyond turning. Lorena laid a hand on his shoulder, and he understood her silent demand to taste the girl's blood. He turned to kiss her, the flavour of Holly mingling in their mouths.

"You've done well. Now let her drink from you and feel the bond begin." She slipped the hilt of a small, sharp dagger into his hand.

"Can she drink now? She's barely alive."

"She will drink." Lorena gazed down at the girl. "She doesn't need to know what she's doing. She'll feed on instinct."

He nodded and grasped the dagger, running it down the length of his wrist and holding it to Holly's open mouth. At first the blood simply trickled in, wetting her tongue and throat, then he felt movement in her lips, an uncertain swallow. A moment later her mouth was locked onto his vein, drinking with painful force.

She drank and drank, as Bill had done; this time, instead of feeling the blood swallowed away, he felt as though he were entering her with it. Her body became an extension of his, holding blood that belonged to both of them. He was struck suddenly with an overwhelming lust for her--to possess her, to control her. All else around him became blackness. He existed only as he was in this moment, her blood becoming his blood, becoming her blood again.

Then Lorena's strong grip on his arm pulled him from the trance, and he wrenched his wrist away, feeling weak as the graveyard returned around him, the trees and the grass suddenly present again. He breathed harshly, leaning back on the grass beside Lorena.

"Is it done?" he asked her, looking up.

She nodded. "When you have your strength back, put her in the grave."

He waited until his head had cleared, then picked Holly up from the ground. Her body seemed broken and lifeless. He put her into the grave, then lowered himself in beside her, turning his head as Lorena shovelled the dirt in over them, covering them both.

**

In his coffin he sometimes woke during the day, disturbed by certain sounds or woken by a particularly intense dream. In the ground he slept without waking, his sleep so deep that he never moved—as though his body, once placed in the soil, remembered its death and returned to that state until the moon rose again.

The climb to the surface was arduous, each attempt to grasp something firm filling his hands with crumbled dirt. In the end, he was able to climb out only by pushing with his feet against the earth that had filled the space below him. He shook himself off when he stood on the grass again, brushing dirt from his hair and off his arms.

Lorena was not present, and he was relieved to be alone. The same flat headstone that had been Lorena's seat earlier served the same purpose again as he lowered himself onto it, staring at the mound of dirt he had just climbed out of. Soon Holly would emerge, as something new and different, her human form only a shell for a soul that would now live to see centuries pass. He couldn't contain a feeling of having betrayed her, this innocent human girl, although the choice had been hers. There was no way to truly make the decision until one had experienced both humanity and vampirism, but by then it was too late.

 

He waited, watching the grave. The night began to wear on, and he stood, tense and wary. She should have clawed her way up to the surface by now, her new hunger waking her as soon as the sun's rays disappeared from the sky.

Half the night moved slowly by, and Bill felt his own desire to feed building. He forced himself to ignore it, to control the urgings that prickled in his veins and tightened his fists. This was a control he would teach Holly, if he could. A vampire must be the master of their own body, or be a slave to it.

He heard a noise coming from the ground—a deep growling, like an animal trapped in a corner. Standing up, he watched the dirt for signs of movement. A hand appeared, followed by another. They grasped at the air until Holly's head emerged between them and she pulled herself up, bit by bit.

Bill knew just by looking at her eyes that something was wrong. Instead of their usual pale blue iciness, Holly's eyes were bright red, covered in some kind of thin, bloody film. She had a savage look on her face, her angelic features twisted and distorted. Her movements did not reflect a natural vampire grace, but rather jerked and pulled, like she was a puppet on strings.

"Holly." Bill spoke her name, but there was no recognition in her eyes. He strained to feel her, to feel their bond as he could with Lorena, the connection in their blood, but there was only a dullness.

He watched her sniff the air, her lips curling back instinctively to reveal her new fangs. She scented blood, the same humans from the monastery that Bill had been aware of all night. He saw her turn, her intention to run, and took hold of her wrist before she could go. He held her tightly, his grip an iron clamp around her. She stared at him, her expression wild, then began to struggle away, so violently that Bill feared she would tear off her own hand. She grunted and screamed in anger.

As he held the creature that had once been a frail human, he realised what had happened. Her turning, usually a uniform, if not clean, process, had met with an uncommon reaction; something in her had resisted the normal cycle of death and reanimation. Bill had never seen it before, but he had heard the stories of new vampires, left unfinished in their rise back to consciousness, remaining in the feral, instinctual state that makes of the base of vampire nature. No thought but to feed, they were mad with blood-lust, a rabid hellhound among more domesticated breeds.

He watched Holly twist and arch her back away from him, her fine hair whipping around her face, dirt-chunked strands spraying bits of soil around her. This was a desecration beyond what he had imagined. There was no future for this mindless thing he had created—there would be no more pretty dresses, no more seductions. Death had played an ever crueller joke on her than on Bill himself.

He pulled her to his chest, wrapping his arms around her to still her movement. She gibbered and spat, her eyes rolling back in her head. In one swift motion, he leaned down to her neck and bit into the flesh that had once been warm, tasting the cold, dead meat she had become. It didn't take him long to drain her. Moving with great care, unwilling to treat her roughly even now, he lay her on the ground beside the grave. She lay still, blinking weakly, as if she were once again in the grip of the tuberculosis that should have been allowed to claim her.

He broke off a branch from a nearby tree, sharpening one end on the bark, and knelt down. He smoothed her hair back and forced himself to look at what he had done. The great, rolling blackness of the ocean was within him—it had become a part of him without his knowledge. A drop of blood slipped from his left eyes and fell beside Holly's lips. He watched her tongue search for it, quivering with pleasure when it met the liquid. There could be no more of this. He lay a hand on Holly's shoulder, and said, "As your maker, I release you." Then he lowered the stake and braced as a high, guttural shriek ripped through her, tearing her apart. In seconds she was all around him, already returning to the ground she had briefly emerged from.

Bill stood, throwing the stake aside. He was covered in filth, but he had no intention of cleaning himself before meeting Lorena. He wanted her to see this, to show her what he had done—what _they_ had done. His dead heart ached with a pain he hadn't known still lay within him. As he strode from the cemetery, he promised himself he would never turn another again. This darkness was his own, and the burden couldn't be lessened by sharing it with anyone else. He would carry it alone.


End file.
